Martha’s Vineyard lobsters are scarce. More lobsters are landed by the Steamship Authority ferry Island Home from afar than by local lobstermen, and the prognosis is not good for the future for the whole region. From Chatham to as far south as North Carolina, the lobster fishery is in trouble.

The seafood consumer doesn’t have to worry. Lobsters are alive and well in local fish markets, because they come from up north.

The biggest hardship is being felt by lobstermen in Menemsha, where already they are facing rising costs for fuel and a cheap price for what they harvest. Their lobsters don’t even look as good as the ones from Canada. Difficult economic times for consumers worldwide, and an abundance of lobsters from the north, have pulled the value out of a fresh lobster landed at the Vineyard dock. Meanwhile Island fishermen have been hit by restrictions as part a regionwide effort to save the fishery.

“It has been a struggle,” said Chris Stien, of West Tisbury, who fishes out of Menemsha. “It is pretty much collapsed, and it has been going on about a decade.”

Ray Gale, of West Tisbury, a lobsterman who fishes out of Lake Tashmoo, said, “I am just doing it, barely. I didn’t do much lobstering last summer.” Fortunately he has been able to use his boat for other uses, working in dock construction.

Wayne Iacono, a Menemsha lobsterman, said this week he already has started lobstering this season but almost exclusively for his own use.

It is cheaper for him to eat his own lobsters than to eat chicken.

While lobsters are doing well north of Cape Cod and up into Canada, the decline is being felt all the way from the Cape, down the eastern seaboard to the waters off North Carolina. A once multi-billion dollar industry for the region, it is being characterized today as depleted and overfished.

The state Division of Marine Fisheries is about to issue a report on the health of lobsters in the area. Division deputy director Dan McKiernan said they have verified not just a decline in adult lobsters but a significant decline in the juvenile lobsters in area waters, which points to a troubled future. Through the use of survey nets and traps, the fisheries scientists just aren’t finding the numbers of lobsters, especially juveniles.

“We think there is a cause linked to temperature,” Mr. McKiernan said.

“We know that fishing efforts had gone down. We think it is mostly related to environmental conditions,” Mr. McKiernan said.

Given that environmental decline, if fishermen are allowed to continue at their present effort there will be “damage” to the stock, he said.

And so new restrictions on the fishery seem likely.

Deciding how to restore the lobster fishery will fall to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which oversees 23 species, most of them fish but also lobsters, horseshoe crabs and Northern shrimp.

“The commission board has been considering action to take to define the status of the [lobster] stock for a couple of months,” said Toni Kerns, who oversees the lobster fishery for the commission.

“Then we have to define what healthy level the resource should be at.

“The next step is how do we get there. We probably won’t get there [that decision] until later in the summer,” she said.

At the root of the problem might be environmental factors, but the regulators can’t control that; they can only regulate the fishery. And no one disputes that it is in trouble.

Louis Larsen runs the Net Result, a Vineyard Haven fishmarket. Twenty years ago, he said, the lobster fishery in Vineyard Sound and the waters south of the Island were so productive, he built a new building on the Menemsha lobsters just to bank the lobsters harvested, so they could be trucked to the mainland.

“Twenty years ago we used to ship 80 per cent of our lobsters off-Island. Now 90 per cent of our lobsters have to be shipped in,” Mr. Larsen said.

And the lobsters that are caught in Island waters are “definitely a different critter,” he said.

“Their shell doesn’t get as hard as it used to. What comes out of Canada has a hard shell,” Mr. Larsen said.

The inshore lobster fishery is in the worst trouble, he said.

“The inshore lobsters, they don’t harden up and they don’t have much meat.”

Many of the inshore lobsters also suffer from a shell disease which makes them less appealing and is a harmful impact on the females’ ability to reproduce.

That disease peaked a few years ago, and the lobstermen are hopeful it will go away. The shell disease has been linked by research to both water quality issues and the animal’s reduced ability to resist common bacteria.

Bill Adler, president of the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association, said he thinks the area fishermen have taken enough hits in management.

Fishermen have suffered through an increase in the minimum size (carapace length). There are stricter restrictions on the harvesting of female lobsters that have at one time previously been marked with a V-notch on the tail. They also have a smaller trap limit.

Because of new protections for whales, the lobstermen have had to replace all their fishing line with “sinking” fishing line to minimize entanglement.

He said the fisheries managers haven’t given enough time for the current restrictions to work.

Massachusetts lobstermen also are concerned about the potential impact of a proposal to establish more than 100 wind turbines in prime real estate, the waters south and west of Noman’s Land.

“We’ve got bait problems too,” Mr. Adler said.

Fishermen are being further restricted in their ability to use skate and herring as bait.

“When bait prices go up, it hits everybody,” Mr. Adler said.

The Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association has 1,600 members, and while the membership numbers have remained pretty stable over the years, membership is aging.

“The average age of a lobsterman is 58 years old. There are very few guys coming into the fishery,” Mr. Adler said.

If there is any positive news, Mr. Adler said, it is in plans to begin a local breeding program.

“We are now talking to the Division of Marine Fisheries about possible ways to seek funds to reactivate the [Oak Bluffs] lobster hatchery to see what it can do, see if it can help.”

The 60-year-old building sits idle and hasn’t hatched baby lobsters in 14 years, because of disagreements over whether it was effective in helping the fishery.

And there still is disagreement among fishermen about the solution to the industry’s problem, and even about the problem itself.

“Lobsters go in cycles,” said Everett H. Poole, 79, of Chilmark has a memory of lobstering going back years than most fisheries biologists have been alive. He ran a fish market in Menemsha for 50 years.

“In the 1940s there were a fair amount of lobsters. It dropped in the late 40s. I couldn’t get enough lobsters to take care of business. I used to send a truck to Scituate to get lobsters. A few years later it got better. That is the way it goes,” Mr. Poole said. “They say lobsters are in tough shape, they go and come.”

“I don’t want to blame management,” said Scott Stephens, a lobsterman from Vineyard Haven. “It hasn’t been their fault. It is complicated. There are so many parties interested in having their way, both federal and state. It takes a long time to work things out.”

“I think everything is out of balance,” said Mr. Iacono. “The lobsters have so many predators. There are dogfish, there are skates, all the sea bass, even the scup. I just don’t want to see any more restrictions.”

The debate will continue, but one comment no one in the industry could argue with came from Mr. Stephens:

“There are a lot easier ways to make a living,” he said.